Bright, crisp and fizzing, the French 76 lets chilled Champagne lengthen a cold-shaken sour of vodka, fresh lemon and simple syrup into something as light and lively as a glass of sparkling wine. The neutral vodka base strips away any botanical edge, so the drink tastes cleaner and sharper, with the lemon's tartness and the wine's fine bubbles carrying it through to a lemon-peel finish.
Garnish: Lemon Peel
shaken · Champagne Flute · Up
add
Add the vodka, lemon juice, and simple syrup to a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake well until thoroughly chilled.
strain
Strain into a chilled Champagne flute.
top
Top with chilled Champagne.
garnish
Express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
No single inventor or originating bar is on record for the French 76; it arose by convention as the obvious vodka version of the gin-based French 75. It belongs to a family of numbered spirit swaps around that parent drink, alongside the French 95 made with bourbon and the French 125 made with cognac. The vodka take settled in as that spirit climbed in popularity during the late twentieth century, and it now appears widely in recipe collections, brand drink indexes among them.